{
  "abstract": "We present the discovery of a strongly lensed galaxy at z ∼ 11–12, dubbed the “Misty Moons,” identified in the JWST Treasury Survey, Vast Exploration for Nascent, Unexplored Sources. The Misty Moons is gravitationally lensed by the galaxy cluster MACS J0257.1-2325 at z = 0.505, and has five multiple images suggested by two independent lens models. Two of the five images, ID1 and ID2 ( μ ∼ 20–30), are very bright (F200W∼26 AB mag) and exhibit blue SEDs with prominent Ly α breaks. In the source plane, the Misty Moons is a sub- L * galaxy ( M UV ∼ −18.0 mag) resolved into multiple stellar clumps, each of which has an effective radius of r eff ∼ 10–70 pc and a stellar mass of ∼10 ⁷ M ⊙ . These clumps dominate the stellar mass budget of the Misty Moons (≳80%), similar to other high- z clumps, which suggests a highly clustered mode of star formation in the early Universe, unlike seen in local dwarf galaxies. We convolve the source-plane image with the JWST/NIRCam point-spread function to produce a mock NIRCam image of the Misty Moons without lensing magnification and find that the intrinsic galaxy has a radial surface-brightness profile comparable to those of z ≳ 10 faint galaxies, such as JADES-GS-z13-0 and JADES-GS-z14-1, indicating that the Misty Moons represents a typical z ≳ 10 faint galaxy. The Misty Moons, a lensed galaxy with resolved internal structures, provides an ideal laboratory for exploring the early stages of galaxy formation at z ≳ 10.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "The University of Tokyo",
    "The University of Texas at Austin",
    "University of Toronto",
    "Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics",
    "National Astronomical Observatory of Japan",
    "SOKENDAI (The Graduate University for Advanced Studies)",
    "University of Edinburgh",
    "Ben-Gurion University of the Negev",
    "Chiba University",
    "NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory",
    "Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN)",
    "University of Copenhagen",
    "NRC Herzberg",
    "University of Ljubljana",
    "University of Groningen",
    "Stockholm University",
    "INAF—OAS",
    "University of California Davis",
    "Center for Astrophysics∣Harvard & Smithsonian",
    "Space Telescope Science Institute",
    "Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)",
    "The Johns Hopkins University",
    "Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)",
    "Univ Lyon",
    "Indiana University",
    "Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía–CSIC",
    "Sorbonne Université",
    "Universidad de Tarapacá",
    "University of Pittsburgh",
    "University of Manchester",
    "University of Geneva",
    "Instituto de Física de Cantabria (CSIC-UC)",
    "California Institute of Technology",
    "University of Arizona",
    "Observatório Nacional",
    "Rochester Institute of Technology",
    "The Graduate University for Advanced Studies",
    "The University of Western Australia",
    "ARCCentre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D)",
    "Technical University of Denmark"
  ],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 78,
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    {
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        0
      ],
      "name": "Minami Nakane",
      "orcid": "0009-0000-1999-5472"
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    {
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        1
      ],
      "name": "Vasily Kokorev",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-5588-9156"
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    {
      "affs": [
        2,
        3
      ],
      "name": "Seiji Fujimoto",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-7201-5066"
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    {
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        0,
        4,
        5
      ],
      "name": "Masami Ouchi",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-1049-6658"
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        6
      ],
      "name": "Derek J. McLeod",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-4368-3326"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        7
      ],
      "name": "Miriam Golubchik",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-9411-3484"
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    {
      "affs": [
        8
      ],
      "name": "Masamune Oguri",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-3484-399X"
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    {
      "affs": [
        7
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      "name": "Adi Zitrin",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-0350-4488"
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    {
      "affs": [
        6
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      "name": "Cecilia Bondestam",
      "orcid": "0009-0008-3775-5112"
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    {
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        9
      ],
      "name": "Callum T. Donnan",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-7622-0208"
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      "name": "Gabriel Brammer",
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        1
      ],
      "name": "Steven L. Finkelstein",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-8519-1130"
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      "name": "Chris Willott",
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      "name": "Gregor Rihtaršič",
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      "name": "Guillaume Desprez",
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      "name": "Angela Adamo",
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      "name": "Eros Vanzella",
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      "name": "Maruša Bradač",
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      "name": "Matteo Messa",
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      "name": "Hiroto Yanagisawa",
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      "name": "Fengwu Sun",
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      "name": "Henry C. Ferguson",
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      "name": "Ray A. Lucas",
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      "name": "Dan Coe",
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      "name": "Johan Richard",
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      "name": "Abdurro’uf",
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      "name": "Hollis B. Akins",
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      "name": "Joseph F. V. Allingham",
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      "name": "Ricardo O. Amorín",
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      "name": "Yoshihisa Asada",
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      "name": "Hakim Atek",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-7570-0824"
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      "name": "Franz E. Bauer",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-8686-8737"
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      "name": "Rachel Bezanson",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-5063-8254"
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      "name": "Larry D. Bradley",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-7908-9284"
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      "name": "John Chisholm",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-0302-2577"
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      "name": "Christopher J. Conselice",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-1949-7638"
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        2
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      "name": "Pratika Dayal",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-8460-1564"
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        30
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      "name": "Miroslava Dessauges-Zavadsky",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-0348-2917"
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        31
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      "name": "Jose M. Diego",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-9065-3926"
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      "name": "Andreas L. Faisst",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-9382-9832"
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        2
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      "name": "Gavin Farley",
      "orcid": "0009-0007-2578-9238"
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      "name": "Qinyue Fei",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-7232-5355"
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      "name": "Brenda L. Frye",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-1625-8009"
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      "name": "Yoshinobu Fudamoto",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-7440-8832"
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      "name": "Lukas J. Furtak",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-6278-032X"
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        0
      ],
      "name": "Yuichi Harikane",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-6047-430X"
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        1
      ],
      "name": "Tiger Yu-Yang Hsiao",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-4512-8705"
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        25,
        34
      ],
      "name": "Yolanda Jiménez-Teja",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-6090-2853"
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    {
      "affs": [
        35
      ],
      "name": "Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-9187-3605"
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        4,
        36
      ],
      "name": "Tomokazu Kiyota",
      "orcid": "0009-0004-4332-9225"
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        19
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      "name": "Anton M. Koekemoer",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-6610-2048"
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      "name": "Claudia del P. Lagos",
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      "name": "Georgios E. Magdis",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-4872-2294"
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    {
      "name": "Ashish Kumar Meena",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-7876-4321"
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    {
      "name": "Lamiya Mowla",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-8530-9765"
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      "name": "Gaël Noirot"
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      "name": "Yoshiaki Ono",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-9011-7605"
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      "name": "Rafael Ortiz",
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      "name": "Richard Pan",
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  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/7kv2b78fqh7ff.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.3847/1538-4357/ae8d09",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "7kv2b78fqh7ff",
  "issns": [
    "0004-637X",
    "1538-4357"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae8d09",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "3103|Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena"
    ]
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  "openalex": "W7222983787",
  "pdf_url": "https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae8d09/pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-19",
  "publisher": "American Astronomical Society",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/7kv2b78fqh7ff.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:18:11Z",
      "native_id": "10.3847/1538-4357/ae8d09",
      "source": "crossref",
      "url": "https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae8d09"
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  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "astronomy",
      "origin": "openalex:3103|Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena",
      "subfield": "galaxies"
    }
  ],
  "title": "VENUS: A Strongly Lensed Clumpy Galaxy at z ∼ 11–12 Behind the Galaxy Cluster MACS J0257.1-2325",
  "title_text": "VENUS: A Strongly Lensed Clumpy Galaxy at z ∼ 11–12 Behind the Galaxy Cluster MACS J0257.1-2325",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:18:11Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/7kv2b78fqh7ff",
  "venue": "The Astrophysical Journal",
  "versions": []
}